September 10, 2012
-
EXTRA!!!
Helene, Caitlin and Nicole Caught in the Merc!
Today’s Local Section Has All of Us! Helene is the Lady in Red, Caitlin is the Lass Behind Her, Nicole Wears the Yellow Flower, and I’m the Guy in the Hat!!!
1 Happy Monday to you all! I opened up this morning’s Merc News, turned to the Local section and it seems my family and I were caught in a picture taken at the Mtn. View Art and Wine Festival yesterday!!! More on that later!!!
2 Hope you had a restful and magnificent weekend.
3 I sure did; one of the best ever.
4 It began with that screwball who kidnapped his kids and then stole a yacht being cuffed in Monterey.
5 That was the first thing I worried about the second that story broke: if this guy is goofy enough to do all of that, then he sounds pretty desperate.
6 But our mighty peeps in blue figured out that this guy was a somewhat-of-a kook and got him.
7 And the kids were okay.
8 Moving on, Part the First: It was nice on Sunday to have read about A’s pitcher Brandon McCarthy, who last week was speared in the head by a line drive. The hit fractured his skull, requiring brain surgery.
9 He had surgery on Wednesday to get rid of an epidermal hematoma, a condition that can be life-threatening.
10 Yesterday’s Merc provided us with a lot of hope in an article by beat writer Joe Stiglich.
11 Stiglich reported a Twitter by the A’s pitcher, in which McCarthy tweeted, “Crazy about this children’s Tylenol. I can’t believe they give it to kids.”
12 This was Saturday morning at around 2 a.m.
13 Okay, so the line was from an episode of Arrested Development, but showed us a lucid and humorous young man in an intense situation.
14 I see things like that as almost better than a doctor’s report, because I’ve spent lots of time around hospitals in the past five years, and humor is an underrated medicine.
15 All of which gives me a moment to give hopes and prayers to Helene’s brother Ron, who is no longer in critical condition following some intensive surgery resulting in the loss of a limb.
16 Ron is a vet, and has been under intense vigilance by the VA at Travis. He has gone through a tremendously stressful and worrisome few months, as have we all, but reports yesterday gave us all some high fives and intensive hope.
17 Any thoughts or prayers would certainly be welcome. It’s my understanding that things like that definitely have shown positive results.
18 Thanks; I didn’t want to put Ron out there too much because he’s the kind of guy who would say, “What the hell didja do THAT for?”
19 But he’s a great guy, a guy with a wonderful heart and an incredible sense of humor. And a soldier, not only in war, but in life.
20 He stands right beside my Dad as a hero.
21 So the reports yesterday rocked.
22 And like Brandon McCarthy, anything can happen, but with the thoughts, smiles, and prayers of friends and family, we’re hoping everyone will wind up on top.
23 Moving on, Part the Second: Just a quick memory of Ron: About two years ago o New Years’ Eve, we visited Ron at his Mom’s in Paradise. We had already watched a docu on The Von Trapp Family, revealing Maria as an abusive woman with a heart of gold.
24 For those of you not schooled in musicals, Maria was the Julie Andrews’ character in the classic play/film The Sound of Music.
25 AnywayZ, while the documentary was somewhat kind, it also showed that Maria was the Jim Harbaugh of singers-who-take-away-the-hearts of the Reich.
26 We naturally took nothing seriously, because Ron and I are both really irreverent when it comes to sacred cows.
27 As midnight approached, we all wondered what we would watch AFTER the doc.
28 To both of our delights, we saw that there was a Three Stooges marathon on some channel, something equivalent to our own channel 36. VERY low budget, but also something that would keep the irreverancy fires glowing.
29 Now Ron’s Mom has alway hated the the Stooges, figuring probably correctly that if small children watched people putting other people’s heads in large vices, other children might copycat the same behaviors, resulting in anarchy and idiocy among young children.
30 Naturally, as two sons who grew up with the Stooges, we both knew instinctively that most normal kids would simply laugh at the slapstick. At no moment in either of our lives did either of us ever think about actually putting someone’s head in a vice, or of even sawing someone’s head, for that matter.
31 And so we got the giggles. The television blasted the Stooges all night, with the incessant, “Woo, woo, woo!” of Curly driving everybody crazy. We kept giggling, well into the night.
32 They were the same sort of giggles that we got twenty years earlier when, on a warm Thanksgiving evening, we both snuck into the kitchen to pick the turkey carcass with our fingers.
33 The turkey carcass was supposed to be saved for sandwiches, soup, and other meals, but we became little devils. We knew that you don’t mess with the soup, but we got all up in that stuff. It was so good that we were almost crying, while at the same time laughing because that just isn’t done.
34 So good times, and good news on Ron.
35 Moving on, Part the Thoid:
36 Well!
37 We absolutely LOVED the Mtn. View Art and Wind Festival. The artwork popped at this Festival, much of it stunning. Large photographs of Tahoe sunsets, Mt. Rainier’s wildflowers, Tuscan cottages, and San Francisco’s fog danced in circles everywhere.
38 The smells of smoky chicken, waffle cones, and fine wines drifted in and out the entire day.
39 Our hotel was a block away from all the wonderful music and peaceful smiles of people enjoying the energy of an outdoor market.
40 Yes, we stayed in a hotel in Mtn. View! We all needed a mini-vacay, so this had been in the works for quite some time. And the nice thing was the ride home didn’t take four hours; it all just worked.
41 Everything went perfectly. At the height of our shopping day, we wandered into West Valley Music, where I almost bought myself a guitar. Caitlin looked up and said, “Daddy you owe me a flute!” This has been true for years. I borrowed Caitlin’s flute for one of our musicals, and somebody stole it. I smiled, and the owner came out with a nice flute for Caitlin. I got it for her, to the delight of all.
41 Right across the street from our hotel stood the venerable Frankie, Johnny, and Luigi Too! restaurant, a South Bay landmark.
42 On Saturday we left the festival about a half hour before it closed and hustled over to the place, where we dined on superbly cooked Italian dishes and sipped on fine wines.
43 Overall, the event worked. We got home, and Caitlin took out her flute and began playing. Without hesitation, Nicole pulled her saxophone out, and the two jammed Wicked tunes. We later watched the Niners beat the Packers, watched the Giants beat the Bums, and found out Ron was no longer critical.
44 When the girls departed, it was the end of a perfect two days. I expected it to be fun, but I didn’t expect all the miracles.
45 And I awakened this morning to see that an epic mini-vacation had been caught forever in the Mercury News!
46 It’s nice to smile again, I can tell you that one.
47 It’s been a really rough year, so it was a complete delight finally to have something really awesome happen for us.
48 And it clearly had to be reported.
49 Hope this made you smile; it sure made me.
50 Have a wonderful week.
51 Peace.
~H~
